United States:
"Mass murder of women and children"
Following is a Japanese report on the fire-bombings of Japan.
"America has revealed her barbaric character before in the terror
bombings of civilian populations in Hamburg, Berlin, and other German
cities, in her destruction of priceless cultural monuments in various
parts of Europe, in her sinking of innumerable hospital ships, and in
countless other acts of savagery beyond mention. But the raids on Tokyo
and Nagoya with the last few days have demonstrated more spectacularly
than ever the fiendish character of the American enemy.
"For these recent raids have been the most unquestionable examples
of calculated terror bombing. Raining flaming incendiaries over a vast
area of civilian dwellings, the raiders can make no excuse of having
aimed at military or industrial installations.
"It was an attempt at mass murder of women and children who had no
connection with war production or any activity directly connected with
the war. There can be no other result than to strengthen the conviction
of every Japanese that there can be no slackening of the war effort...
"The action of the Americans is all the more despicable because of
the noisy pretensions they constantly make about their humanity and
idealism. They are the first to accuse others of atrocities, raising
loud protests over claims of alleged Japanese mistreatment of prisoners
of war and alleged Japanese destruction in the zones of hostility. But
even the most extravagant of the false American charges against the
Japanese pale into insignificance beside the actual acts of deliberate
American terror against civilian populations. No one expects war to
be anything but a brutal business, but it remains for the Americans
to make it systematically and unnecessarily a wholesale horror for innocent
civilians.
Hoito Edoin, The Night Tokyo Burned: The Incendiary Campaign
Against Japan, March - August, 1945, St. Martin's Press, New
York, 1987. p.120
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